I have received the following as a comment from Howard Bailey, with some comments about Frederick Bailey’s “Textbook of Gravity, Sunspots and Climate“ and an exchange with some critic of his. Being it way too long as such, am republishing it as a blog, and as usual, it is posted as-is (with some formatting, and removing Joe’s family name).

My father has done a lot of independent, unfunded, unbiased work on this subject for a number of years; the following is an overview of the contents of his latest work.

I would like to draw your attention to a relatively recent discovery by my father, Frederick Bailey, regarding Sunspot prediction and more importantly, what drives major global temperature changes.

The incoming strictly-orthodox and yet very open minded IPCC message is of an ongoing, complex, fascinating scientific analysis full of uncertainties that need to be investigated. Yet, at the other end of the “broken telephone” all channels are clogged by absurdist, simplistic claims of “the debate is over” (a statement that is, in a sense, the true denial).

Take a look for example at the magnitude of the solar forcing, again according to the IPCC. The “official value” everybody with even a remote interest keeps hearing about, is 0.12 and can be found in AR4-WG1-Chapter2 (*), page 193.

But then if you go to page 212, Table 2.11, it turns out that the “level of scientific understanding” for Solar Irradiance is “Low”, and for the component linked to cosmic UV rays is “Very low”.

And that’s not even remotely enough. All the known unknowns about the role of the Sun in shaping the Earth’s climate are clearly spelled out in Joanna D. Haigh’s “The Sun and the Earth’s climate” (**). True, that article might have been published after the official IPCC deadline. On the other hand, Dr Haig was well known at the time to the IPCC authors and reviewers, and appears four times among the References for that chapter alone.

That means that actual value can be half, or 2.5 times as much, and that’s just considering a confidence interval of 90% (“moderately confident” in statistical jargon) rather than the classic 95% (regarding which the spread between minimum and maximum possible value would have obviously been considerably wider).

And so we find the IPCC “moderately confident” about a forcing whose (1) known known components are “little to very little” understood, (2) known unknown components are not even considered despite being present in the Literature and (3) unknown unknown components… (well, “no comment” about those).

Add to that the fact that a “forcing”, like all “forcings“, is not a measurable quantity in the real world, and therefore exists strictly as an estimate. An estimate about which the IPCC is somewhat ‘schizophrenic’ to say the least.

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And yet, all that fun is not found anywhere: instead of “low to very low understanding” about an estimate done with “moderate confidence“, what we read is how small the Solar forcing “IS”: 0.12.

One important issue is to establish the magnitude of any secular trends in total solar irradiance (TSI). This may be achieved by careful analysis and understanding of the satellite instruments [and] continued [with] current and new satellites. For longer periods it requires a more fundamental understanding of how solar magnetic activity relates to TSI. This would not only facilitate more reliable centennial-scale reconstructions of TSI, from e.g. sunspot records, but also advance understanding of how cosmogenic isotope records may be interpreted as historical TSI.

Actually, there is another source of information for the history of solar activity, and it could open possibilities of discovery and understanding of an almost unheard-of scale.

The […] lunar soil’s regolith contains also an at-least-billion-year-long record of the solar activity [22] [23] [24] that would help a lot in the understanding of the behaviour and evolution of our star. Just as well, buried regolith deposits are expected to preserve traces of the very young Sun [25].

London, 17 May (MNN) – NASA, the American space agency, has been called into justifying the humongous(-ly little) money it spends every year for space exploration, in a shocking new development connected to the ongoing lack of sunspots.

But all of a sudden yesterday, a “pore” with a date of Aug 21 has been classified as “sunspot” by the SIDC and then the NOAA. Trouble is, nobody seems to have seen it apart from one observer in Catania, Italy.

Probably, as per Leif Svalgaard’s comment at Anthony Watt’s blog:

really, no spots or one tiny one doesn’t make any difference

Also, from another of Svalgaard’s comments

There are indications that the modern counts are too high with possible repercussions for reconstructions of TSI and the climate debate.

But if that’s true, then I can contend that the current spotless period is 71 days, starting with the end of sunspot #999 on June 23, 2008. And continuing to this day.

That makes the current spotless period the second longest ever (behind the 92 days of Apr 8 to Jul 8, 1913).

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Sunspot #1000 in fact, was likely no “proper sunspot” at all. By that I mean a sunspot that would not have been spotted in the past, given its extremely tiny size.

The SOHO MDI archive may show something but only if the observer knows where to look (no I will not give clues). Chances are, none would have spotted it in 1913 either.

AND NOW FOR THE SPOT-THE-SPOT CHALLENGE: I am posting the July 17-20 series (remember, sunspot #1000 has been reported for July 18-20…good luck with finding it!):

(I RECOMMEND CLEANING YOUR DISPLAY FIRST…)

SOHO Jul 17

SOHO Jul 18

SOHO Jul 19

SOHO Jul 20

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(spoiler ahead)

Here’s the one and only one picture of sunspot #1000 I have found on the internet, in an Australian internet forum. Its author clarifies, though:

The spot is not as big as shown, just a product of the poor seeing/focus

Sunspot #1000

Just compare all the above with the pictures from Jun 21, where a proper sunspot is visible indeed:

SOHO Jun 21

How many pores and microspots were flickering in and out of existence during the Maunder Minimum, one wonders…

Cosmic rays stream down into Earth’s atmosphere from the sun and elsewhere beyond the solar system. Recent studies show that these particles penetrate into the troposphere and alter the way that droplets condense to form clouds, rain and snow with important weather and climate consequences. Changes in the sun’s ultraviolet light affects the ozone layer and the energy input into the upper atmosphere. As the upper atmosphere is heated, it expands into space causing increased friction for satellites.

The ISS must be ‘re-boosted’ every three months to prevent it from burning up in the atmosphere. The Skylab station on July 11, 1979 reentered prematurely because of a solar storm event.